Mermaid said, sympathetically: “She’s an invalid, isn’t she?” “Oh, that isn’t--I mean--why, why, yes. She is--she has to walk with a crutch. And then, only a little.” His confusion was so evident that Mermaid felt sorry for him. With true feminine instinct she decided that he must suffer some more so that ultimately she might help him. She knew he did not go to school, she knew that he lived all alone, shut up in that expensive house, surrounded by gloomy evergreens, which must be as sunless as Miss Smiley’s front parlour had been once on a time. He lived there with a crippled mother and a formidable father, a retired sea captain who was undoubtedly a stern disciplinarian. He was pale and undersized. Mermaid had heard stories of sea captains all her remembering life and knew them to be a peculiar race of men. Her imagination worked rapidly on the problem presented by Guy Vanton, and she concluded, perhaps somewhat rashly, that his father had spent most of his money on the mahogany and teakwood of the parlour and fed his boy on ship’s biscuits and water. At any rate, he looked it. But his eyes fascinated her. Considering briefly the means of further advancing their acquaintance she decided that he should teach her French. In turn, she would ask him home with her to supper, and see that he got a square meal. “I wonder if you wouldn’t teach me French?” Guy Vanton looked surprised, but then an expression of pleasure came into the brown eyes. He nodded. Mermaid continued: “I could come over in the afternoon, sometimes, when I haven’t to help Miss Smiley clean house. We could be very still and not bother your mother. And sometimes you could come to our house. I’m sure Miss Smiley wouldn’t mind. I bring Dickie Hand there and she gives him cookies though she hates his father like anything.” They were walking along the street together. Young Mr. Vanton had got his cap back on his head at last, but he walked stiffly, a little deferentially, his body half turned toward the girl. Mermaid chattered along easily on whatever themes came into her head, occasionally punctuating her talk with a question calling for no answer more elaborate than a “Yes” or a “No.” She was much gratified when Dick Hand and Tommy Lupton stopped their regular afternoon pastime of punching each other’s heads to stare across the street at her escort. She heard Dickie say to Tom: “Well, will you look? Girls make me sick!” As if this were the very effect she desired to produce, Mermaid was remarking to the Vanton heir: “That’s Dick Hand over there, and Tommy Lupton. You know them, don’t you? Dick is thirteen and Tommy’s fifteen. I’m only eleven, but I’m as big as either of them. You’re fifteen, aren’t you?” “I’m seventeen,” he divulged. Mermaid stood still in her astonishment.